The Top 5 Reasons You Need a Workers Compensation Lawyer

We wrote recently about the process of filing for Workers’ Compensation benefits. If you haven’t read it yet, you can check it out here.

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development has detailed instructions on their website to help you through the process. In a perfect world, you would follow the process step by step and your employer, along with their insurance provider, would do everything they could to help you out.

However, since we do not live in a perfect world, it often helps to have an experienced Workers Compensation lawyer to guide you through the process and fight for all of the benefits that you are entitled to under Tennessee law.

Here are the Top 5 reasons you might need a Workers Compensation lawyer working for you:

1. Your employer will not provide you with medical treatment.

   If you are injured on the job, your employer is required to provide you with medical care.

2. Your employer does not provide you with a panel of doctors to choose from.

   According to Tennessee law, your employer must provide injured employees a panel of at least three doctors, within your community and not in the same practice. If the injury is to your back, the panel must be expanded to four medical providers and must include a chiropractor.

3. You have been restricted from work, but you are not receiving your weekly temporary total disability checks.

   If your doctor tells you not to work or your employer does not have work within your restrictions, you may be entitled to temporary total disability payments, or TTD. TTD is paid out at 66 and 2/3 percent of your average weekly wage and you qualify for benefits after 7 consecutive days off of work and benefits begin to accumulate after 8 consecutive days off of work.

4. You are within three months of the one year anniversary of your work injury and still have not received your benefits.

   You cannot file your claim in Court until all remedies under the Benefit Review Process have been exhausted. In most instances, you have one year from the date of your injury to file a request for a Benefit Review Conference with the Tennessee Department of Labor. If you fail to meet this deadline, you may not be able to recover any benefits for your injury. An experienced Workers’ Compensation lawyer can help you navigate this process and file the appropriate paperwork in a timely manner to preserve your claim. Once you have an injury, the clock is ticking. So don’t wait to speak with an experienced Workers’ Compensation lawyer.

5. If the workers’ compensation insurance company is ignoring your doctor’s recommendation for treatment or not filling your prescriptions.

If you have experienced any of these issues, or if you’re simply confused by the process and not sure what to do, call The Lawyers of Brown & Roberto for a free consultation. Fees for Worker’s Compensation cases are based on your settlement, so you don’t need any money up front. The Lawyers of Brown & Roberto are serious lawyers who know how to win. Call (865) 691-2777 or use the convenient online form.